Wherefore, gentlemen, standS. Douglas Olson, Broken Laughter. Select Fragments of Greek Comedy. Edited with Introduction, Commentary, and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 98-99:
guard and worship the heroes, as
we are the custodians
of what's bad and what's good,
and keeping a lookout for the unjust 5
and for thieves and robbers
we give them diseases:
distended spleens, coughs, dropsy,
catarrh, mange, podagra,
madness, canker-sores, 10
buboes, shivers, fever.
[. . . . . . . . . ] to thieves we give
πρὸς ταῦτ᾿ οὖν, ὦνδρες, φυλακὴν
ἔχετε τούς θ᾿ ἥρως σέβεσθ᾿, ὡς
ἡμεῖς ἐσμεν οἱ ταμίαι
τῶν κακῶν καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν,
κἀναθροῦντες τοὺς ἀδίκους 5
καὶ κλέπτας καὶ λωποδύτας
τούτοις μὲν νόσους δίδομεν·
σπληνιᾶν βήττειν ὑδερᾶν
κορυζᾶν ψωρᾶν ποδαγρᾶν
μαίνεσθαι λειχῆνας ἔχειν 10
βουβῶνας ῥῖγος πυρετόν
. . . ] . . [. . (.)]. κλέπτα[ις] δίδομεν
12 ταῦτα τοῖς suppl. Handley, τοῖς δὲ δὴ Barrett
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, December 06, 2018
Lookouts
Aristophanes, fragment 322 (from Heroes; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):